A communications problem shut down takeoffs across the US on Friday afternoon before it was lifted more than four hours later.
A communications problem shut down takeoffs across the US on Friday afternoon before it was lifted more than four hours later.
Takeoffs from airports throughout the US largely stopped on Friday after the FAA issued a national ground stop at 3:44PM ET “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.”
More than four hours after the stop was issued, officials announced it was lifted at 8:15PM ET and that flights will resume. It’s unclear how many flights will be able to take off and when, as they now face problems of overloaded airports and flight crews that have run out of time to operate the planes, meaning many people will be stuck where they are for the time being and more flights will be delayed or canceled.
In a White House press conference announcing that the stop had been lifted, Transportation Secretary Ryan Duffy blamed an aging air traffic control system that he is pursuing funds to replace, saying that the TRACONs (Terminal Radar Approach Control) in the air traffic control centers “started to have inconsistency in the data from the radars and the communications from airplanes.”
He said that the devices that had the issue were analog telecom devices, where the switches / routers “got overloaded with data” and started to show inconsistency.
An earlier report from CBS News cited multiple sources who said that an update to the air traffic control system’s private communications network, operated by L3Harris, caused a system reboot and the subsequent outage. L3Harris has not yet responded to a request for comment from The Verge, but during the press conference, Duffy and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin confirmed that “patches” to the existing system sparked the issue.
In response to a reporter’s question about the patches and how they contributed to the outage, Duffy said, “By doing nothing, you inject way more risk into the system… I didn’t anticipate that we would have an outage like this.”
The flight tracking site FlightAware lists 9,124 US flights as delayed and 5,901 flights canceled as of 8:39PM ET.
According to CNN, the last nationwide ground stop in 2023 lasted for about 90 minutes after the NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) system for pilots went down, and the last one prior to that was after the attacks on September 11th, 2001.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Friday afternoon, Mullin told reporters that there is currently no reason to suspect a cyberattack or other national security threat, or any connection to the recent Microsoft Outlook outage, but that at the time no cause had been ruled out for the “telecommunications outage.”
When asked about any possible connection to the cloud-based AI Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories (SMART) system that was activated nationwide on November 10th, he said they were looking into that. Air Space Intelligence (ASI), the company that designed the system and was awarded a 12-year $875 million contract in June to deploy it, denied any connection, tweeting “The current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC.”
Jon Ostrower of The Air Current reports that the outage began with the Chicago air traffic control center, followed by centers in Boston, Washington, New York, and Minneapolis, and as the FAA issued a ground stop for aircraft flying east, more facilities began reporting problems. He said the problems disrupted both the radar and radio frequencies used by air traffic controllers and pilots.
Updated, Friday, November 13th: Added that the stop has been lifted, and quotes from the press conference.